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This article explores building transnational queer and disabilities communities, disability-queer peace, and disability-queer activism in post-peace accord Northern Ireland (NI). Through in-person and virtual interviews with activists, staff, and leaders who are disabled, queer, and/or in allyship, it became clear in the data that respondents were ashamed, frustrated, and sad that ableism and queerphobia continues in NI. Attacks on disabled and LGBTQIA+ people have escalated as a result of the Brexit fallout and the COVID-19 pandemic that negatively impacted marginalized communities that are targeted by legal exclusion, discriminatory, and hateful practices as well as structural and interpersonal violence. Dialogue, diversity, and inclusive practices and policies and a political system that benefits all NI citizens are crucial to building sustainable peace in NI.

Economic aid and peacebuilding efforts to transform the Northern Ireland conflict impact grassroots, civil society organizations (CSOs) and vulnerable people of concern. Brexit is an example of how democracies privilege white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied voices, exclude marginalized voices from peacebuilding efforts, and maintain structural violence that exacerbates sectarian identity conflicts. A qualitative methodology was used to interview 120 participants who shared their experiences of grassroots peacebuilding efforts to transform the Northern Ireland conflict. Findings revealed that community audits are critical to inclusion of local needs, and helped to assess what escalates conflict, British job cuts create needs that overwhelm CSOs and youth who feel hopeless are attracted to sectarian paramilitary groups. They reject peace and trigger further conflict as a result.

2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and the establishment of devolved governance in Northern Ireland. Yet, whilst devolution has largely been held to have positive effects in Scotland and Wales with regards to both women’s descriptive and substantive representation, this impact has been less discernible in Northern Ireland. Of the four regions of the United Kingdom, politics in Northern Ireland is arguably the most unfeminised—women have routinely seen lower descriptive representation in the Northern Irish Assembly and policy-making in areas such as reproductive rights lies far behind the rest of the UK. The article explores why politics is so unfeminised in the post-conflict context in Northern Ireland, by looking at efforts to feminise formal politics (especially the various peace/inter-party agreements and attempts to include women in formal politics) and efforts to politicise feminist activism (the work of the women’s sector to influence policy-making in the province). It then explores some of the academic explanations as to why the feminisation of politics remains so difficult in Northern Ireland.

In the Irish context, legacies of colonialism, the Northern Ireland conflict situation, and the strength of community and women's liberation movements all provide rich resources for understanding the processes involved in both oppression and liberation. This paper draws on the theoretical and research literature and on Irish experiences to develop an understanding of some of the processes and practices that aid in liberation. The research is grounded in diverse writings on oppression and liberation, which include writings on colonialism (E. Duran &B. Duran, 1995; F. Fanon, 1967; V. Kenny, 1985, L. Maracle, 1996), feminist psychology (J. B. Miller, 1986; S. Wilkinson, 1996), liberation psychology (H. A. Bulhan, 1985; L. Comas‐Díaz, M. B. Lykes, & R. D. Alarcon, 1998; I. Martín‐Baró, 1994; Starhawk, 1987), and psychological aspects of racism (b. hooks, 1993; A. Mama, 1995; R. J. Watts, D. M. Griffith, & J. Abdul‐Adil, 1999), homophobia (A. R. D'Augelli & C. J. Patterson, 1995), poverty (K. O'Neill, 1992), and other dimensions of oppression.

A feminist stock-taking on ‘post-conflict’, this paper revisits a study made by the author in 1996–1997, when the women’s community sector was a lively actor in the processes leading to the Good Friday Peace Agreement of 1998. Refusing to observe sectarian conflict lines, women’s centres were re-writing official ‘community development’ policy as community empowerment and political challenge. The author draws on new interviews conducted in 2012 with feminist community activists of that earlier period of ‘frontline feminism’, associated with the Belfast Women’s Support Network. The women reveal how continuing poverty, discrimination, violence and unhealed trauma still characterise working-class life in the post-conflict period, and impede the integration of Protestant and Catholic communities. Official provisions for gender equality have been interpreted in gender-neutral ways, and in some cases turned against women. The demilitarisation of masculinity has been painfully slow. The women’s community sector has experienced a loss of political drive as women’s centres have become service providers, dependent on state funding. Feminism is renewing itself, but in fresh forms with different priorities. Will it recover a voice that ‘speaks truth to power’?

The changing nature of conflict and the increase in intrastate conflict during the 1990s, followed by its slow decline since the turn of the century, have led to changing priorities in the field of conflict resolution. No longer is the international community solely concerned with resolving existing conflicts; it also is managing emerging conflicts to ensure that they do not flare into violent conflict. This book outlines some of the strategies parliaments and parliamentarians can adopt to reduce the incidence of conflict and effectively manage conflict when it does emerge. It is hoped that by developing a better understanding of the nexus between parliament, poverty, and conflict parliamentarians will be more aware of the array of options open to them as they seek to contribute to conflict management in conflict-affected societies.

The author revisits women's peace organisations she first encountered in 1995-6 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine, a time when in all three places there seemed to be some hope for peace. She wanted to find out how their organisations - the Medica Women's Therapy Centre, the Belfast Women's Support Network and Bat Shalom of the North had fared in the intervening years - and what had become of their efforts to foster dialogue and peace. In general hopes have been dashed, especially in Israel-Palestine. Women and the politics of gender - let alone any idea of a transversal politics of 'empathy without sameness, shifting without tearing up your roots' - have been largely out of the picture for policy makers in these areas.

This fascinating book explores the pervasive influence of pacifism on Victorian feminism. Drawing on previously unused source material, it provides an account of Victorian women who campaigned for peace and the many feminists who incorporated pacifist ideas into their writing on women and women's work. It explores feminists' ideas about the role of women within the empire, their eligibility for citizenship and their ability to act as moral guardians in public life. Brown shows that such ideas made use - in varying ways - of gendered understandings of the role of force and the relevance of arbitration and other pacifist strategies. 'The truest for of patriotism' examines the work of a wide range of individuals and organisations, from well-known feminists such as Lydia Becker, Josephine Butler and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, to lesser-known figures such as the Quaker pacifists Ellen Robinson and Priscilla Peckover. Women's work within male-dominated organisations, such as the Peace Society and the International Arbitration and Peace Association, is covered alongside single-sex organisations, such as the International Council of Women. Also reviewed are the arguments put forward in feminist journals like the Englishwoman's Review and the Women's Penny Paper. Brown uncovers a wide range of pacifist, internationalist and anti-imperialist strands in Victorian feminist thought, focusing on how these ideas developed within the political and organisational context of the time. This book will be of interest to anyone studying nineteenth-century social movements, and essential reading for those with an interest in the history of British feminism.

Social inclusion is important in peacebuilding. Fostering gender equity faces many challenges under conditions of protracted ethnic conflict. Northern Ireland offers an opportunity to examine more fully how gender equity is infused into democratic transitions from ethnic conflict. Three factors are crucial to women's participation in peace processes and democratic transitions: the structure of political opportunities and availability of resources; women's ability to use the human and organizational resources they had already developed in civil society; and the responsiveness of political parties to gender inclusion.

This article maps the key findings from research on public sector response in policy and practice as seen in service delivery to survivors of conflict in Northern Ireland and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It examines whether the experience of the seriously injured in the Northern Ireland conflict and female victims of sexual violence during the Bosnian war has been recognised by successive governments in post-conflict times, and if the public sector response has been appropriate and effective in meeting their needs; or simply subverted by political expediency and 'reconciliation'. It poses the question whether in post-conflict times some will necessarily be marginalised to ensure the success of the greater peace-building project and, if this is the case, are more constructive answers not both imaginable and a viable alternative?